


Just Getting Along

by Zigadenus



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Fluff, Holiday Fic Exchange, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:27:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22279399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zigadenus/pseuds/Zigadenus
Summary: Christmas should be spent with the people you love, one imagines.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger/Severus Snape
Comments: 133
Kudos: 144
Collections: sshg_giftfest





	1. One.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [SSHG Gift Fest community](https://sshg-giftfest.livejournal.com) on LiveJournal. I badly missed the mark in writing something that fails to meet the intended recipient's expectations of a gift. They have instead suggested I say they "sponsored it", i.e., as a gift for the community. Which... Well. I am profoundly humiliated to put my name to such an egregious offence, but it's a thing that exists and I did write it, so here it is.

Snowflakes were drifting down in the yellow pool of light cast by the lamp at the entry. She could just see it from her current vantage, face pressed against the windowpane and going a little numb from the pressure or the cold. She supposed there was probably something she should be doing. Clothes to pick up, or sheets to straighten, or a tray to collect. It wasn’t fair to leave it all to Harry. Or Kreacher. Except it was _Kreacher_. And Harry. So maybe leaving it just one time was alright. One more time.  
  
Because it wasn’t like this had been _her_ idea.  
  
The water in the en suite had stopped running a while ago. She prised her face off the window, straightened her shoulders, and wished she’d checked her watch. Five minutes was enough time to towel off and put on a robe. Ten was bordering on suspicious – either she’d walk in on another suicide attempt, or he’d be sitting on the toilet.   
  
Or shaving?  
  
This involved a razor blade rather close to jugular veins and carotid arteries, but it also implied some level of self-care, a slight regression of apathy. The state of his room, and the state she’d found him in upon arrival combined to suggest this was only temporary good behaviour. Still, as Harry hopefully — continuously — pointed out, the fact he was willing to try a little implied they were at least getting through to him. She pasted a firm smile on her face, and very carefully did not think about the many months they had been chanting this very refrain.  
  
He made a weak effort to return her smile in the glass, and wiped the last of the foam from ‘round his ears.   
  
“Fit for decent company now?” If she smiled any harder, her face was going to crack.  
  
“I guess.”  
  
“I mean, not that we’re necessarily decent company, but…” She trailed off, unable to think of how to end this; she wasn’t the one who was supposed to have made the joke in the first place. He should have issued this rejoinder, and then it would have been her part to return a riposte. Fencing against herself was far beyond any level of athleticism she’d ever aspired to, aside from being wholly outside of what she’d agreed to when Harry had slumped into her office this afternoon, begging her to come over to poke and cajole, to harass and persuade.  
  
 _Ron’s a bit fragile lately_ , she reminded herself, as she followed his slouching form down the hall stairs and into the Grimmauld Place library.   
  
“Ron! You’re tall, come help me stick this branch back!” Ginny’s effusion was rather like her own, Hermione suspected: false, forced, facile.  
  
The tree was starting to look nice, though, and could only further improve with Ron safely occupied in holding branches as Ginny applied strategic Sticking Charms. Hermione hovered (she was good at hovering) in their vicinity long enough to defuse any perceptive theories that she was desperate to duck and run. The third time she ‘helpfully’ pointed out a gap in the greenery, Ginny smiled tightly and suggested she check up on Harry in the kitchen.  
  
 _Good-oh_ , it was all the permission she needed.  
  
Harry studiously ignored her, until she hooked her foot around one of the kitchen stools and dragged it across the tiling — _bumpity-scrape-bump—_ whereupon he looked up from the eggnog he was assembling. “Yeah, hello. I take it he didn’t drown himself in the shower, then.”  
  
“Not this time, at any rate. We can’t keep doing this.”  
  
“Ron’s a little fragile just now. You know that.”  
  
“We all know that. We’ve all known that for ages. Sometimes I think it’s all we do know, anymore. But Harry! Even George has picked himself up, and Mr. Weasley said… Well, it’s beside the point,” she hastened to switch gears in the face of his increasingly dark expression, “The point is, this is hard on all of us. What if we’re just enabling this, what if we’re doing more harm than good?” _What if we have other things we’d rather be doing, than cosseting poor fragile Ron, who’s so damaged all he can bring himself to do is lie in bed listening to the wireless and ‘reading’ filthy magazines, day in, day out?_  
  
“Look, I don’t know, Hermione. But he’s up out of bed tonight, and we’re going to trim the tree, and it’s just the four of us, right? So let’s just try being happy, and try to forget everything else, okay? Just for tonight?”  
  
“I have plans. I told you that this afternoon.”  
  
“But—”  
  
“Harry, don’t. I told you I couldn’t stay. And I think it was a bit mean to use me to get him out of his room, when you _knew_ I wasn’t staying.”  
  
“He listens to you. You know he cares about you.”  
  
“Please, Harry, you have to stop encouraging this. I’m not his girlfriend, and this. isn’t. my. job. Even if I _was_ , it wouldn’t be my job. And I hope you have some eggnog that hasn’t been spiked, because alcohol is a depressant and we surely don’t need any more of that around here.”  
  
“I’ve got Butterbeer, too. D’you want to bring the biscuits through, I don’t think I can carry everything at once.”  
  
“Aren’t you a wizard? And I said: I’m not staying. In fact, I’m off for home right now, before you coerce me into any more misdeeds.”  
  
“Hah! Caught you out, you admit it!”  
  
“Admit what? I haven’t admitted anything.”  
  
“You just said you’re off for home; that’s hardly “plans”. And reading a book doesn’t count. Come decorate with us, it’ll be fun,” he wheedled.  
  
It would not be fun. It would be painful and awkward and she’d have to endure Ron’s increasingly friendly hands, because _Ron’s A Bit Fragile_ , and apparently a bloke could expect to get away with nearly anything if he were A Bit Fragile. She sighed. “A friend is cooking dinner for me, and I need to change, and I’m already running late.”  
  
“A friend.”  
  
“Yes. I have those.”  
  
“Yeah. Right here. And you’re leaving.”  
  
“Goodnight, Harry.” She pulled her coat and gloves on, and hurried into the falling snow before he could expand on whatever line of thought was giving his face that mulish expression. “Have fun tonight; see you at the Ministry party on Thursday!”  
  
It was fitting, somehow, that her Apparition missed her back step in favour of an icy puddle. She’d been having that kind of day. She clicked the deadbolt in place behind her, and sagged against the door for a heavy moment. Deep breaths. Things could only improve from here.  
  
She relieved herself of her wet socks and even hung her coat in the closet, instead of throwing it haphazardly in the direction of the overloaded coat tree. It only took an extra moment.  
  
And yet every extra moment was one she lost.   
  
Moments mattered. She didn’t have many. Or at least, she didn’t have _enough_.   
  
She bit hard at her lower lip, and made a valiant effort to school herself against the bubbling resentment: at Harry, at Ron, at the Ministry, at everyone who’d impinged upon this little slice of time she’d carved out away from them and their constant demands.  
  
Deep breaths.   
  
She strode resolutely into the kitchen and set about with mechanical precision. Glass of water. New phial of George’s potion, retrieved from the depths of her briefcase. Pasteur dropper. And the flask, its shimmering cut glass facets reflecting the light from the hall, little swirls of silver that blossomed out into the blue glass, emanating from wherever her fingers strayed across it. She tipped in the new phial of potion, and gave the flask a practised swirl so that the viscous liquid coated every surface. Maybe that bit was just superstition. Like the way she dripped four millilitres of the potion into the waiting water glass in precise quadrants. Cleaning her pipette in the glass wasn’t, on the other hand. It was just frugal, ensuring she didn’t waste the slightest bit of it.   
  
She made herself put everything away into its proper cabinet, before she took her first swallow. This was not superstition, she didn’t think, so much as ritual.  
  
“And we are hiding in the dark precisely why?” he drawled, from the rectangle of lit hallway that cast his spare form into silhouette.  
  
“Rough day.”  
  
“They’re all rough days.”  
  
“Yeah.” She set the last half of the glass aside; she’d take it up to the bedroom later, to have on hand for the morning. “This one was a little worse.” She rubbed at her temples, as if she could dispel clinging thoughts with the motion.  
  
“Migraine?”  
  
“Start of a tension headache, I think.”  
  
She felt the heat of his body behind her before his fingers flattened across her shoulders. His thumbs began working slow circles along the arc of her scapulae, slowly pressing toward her midline, kneading up to the base of her skull. “Mmm. I don’t pay you enough.”  
  
“Going rate is two lingering kisses,” he murmured. If this was a foray into seduction, though, he ruined it quite adroitly: “What happened to your socks?”  
  
“Oh. I guess I didn’t put a water repellant charm on my new boots. Apparated into that big puddle along the walk. Right there, that’s really good.” His fingers obliged her, even as he vented that little sigh of exasperation. Probably he rolled his eyes. She closed her own, and relaxed back into his touch. “I’d quit my job, you know, except I don’t think I’d get away with robbing Gringotts’ a second time, and damned if I know any other way to get galleons.”  
  
His hands stilled, and he leaned his bony chin on her shoulder. “As much as I’d love to indulge you in fantasies of money-making criminal conspiracy, I do think you should put something on your feet. Go fetch your slippers while I rummage together some dinner. I think there’s still leftover stew.”  
  
By the time she’d deposited her glass on the bedside table, and routed her slippers from beneath the bed, he’d reheated stew and poured them each a measure of red. “Praise be for leftovers,” she said, laying their places at the table. “How was your day? I’m sorry I didn’t ask straight off.”  
  
“Oh, fine. If you quit your job you can stay home days and scrub cauldrons for me, y’know.”  
  
“Sounds delightful.”  
  
“You think I’m joking, but I swear I spent most of today cleaning glassware. How does it all get dirty, all at once? And who cleaned everything in the lab at school, because I’m sure it wasn’t me unless I had markedly more energy back then.”  
  
“I don’t think you slept, personally.”  
  
“Could be. Sterilizing distillation coils in a fugue state.”  
  
“Sounds about right.”  
  
“Well, the nice thing is that I don’t remember teaching half my classes, so at this far remove I’m able to feel a bit nostalgic about it all.”  
  
“Ever think of going back?”  
  
He gave her a horrified look over the top of his wine glass. “Not that nostalgic! If you ever hear me suggest such a profoundly stupid thing, I want you to hex me flat and call the Aurors to examine me for Imperius. Or else it’s someone pulling a polyjuice impersonation. And if not, you’d best check me into the Janus Thickey Ward.”  
  
She laughed. “You could make friends with Gilderoy Lockhart, I suppose.”  
  
“On second thought, just grant me a merciful death.”  
  
“Oh no,” she said archly, “You can’t get away from me that easily.”  
  
His smirk inexplicably softened, and his eyes too. “I assure you, Hermione, there would be nothing ‘easy’ about being away from you.”  
  
She looked down at her plate and choked back a sob, hoping he hadn’t noticed. But of course he did. Even if he hadn’t spent twenty years a spy, he’d still spent two decades teaching, and so of course he noticed everything, and there was no point concealing that her eyes had begun leaking, but naturally she tried, hiding her face against his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her.  
  
“Are we just a bit overwrought tonight?” he asked, as he guided their bodies into the embrace of the sitting room sofa.  
  
“Maybe just a bit,” she sniffled.  
  
“Was it Rafferty again, or those berks in Patents?”  
  
“Oh, work was about the same as always.”  
  
“You’re allowed to leave at 5:00 pm, though. So what if Weasley keeps tabs on you, you’re hardly obligated to stay past dinner.”  
  
“Today wasn’t Percy, it was Ron. Harry came by the office; he’d not been out of his room since last Wednesday, apparently. I keep telling him, if he just gave Kreacher orders not to take food up, this would never progress to the point of needing my intervention every fortnight or two!” She drew in a deep breath, and held it behind clenched teeth.  
  
Severus, for his part, cocked his head to the side. Then, he solemnly reached across, gently pinched the tip of her nose and lightly twisted.   
  
She blinked.  
  
“I’m turning you down to a low simmer.” He nodded smartly.  
  
Two rounds of a cathartic cushion fight, a crying jag, and a tickling match later, she collapsed against his chest with a proclamation worn soft with oft-usage: “You, Severus Snape, are a Class A git. And,” she said, rising slightly to press a kiss along his jaw, “I assure you, I would be completely and utterly wrecked without you.”  
  
He stroked her hair, and didn’t comment for a long time. “I think you’d manage,” he eventually said. “You’d have some bad days, probably, but I think you’d be alright. In time.”  
  
She closed her eyes, and turned her face into the soft wool of his jumper, as if this would prevent her hearing his words. “I guess I should be glad one of us thinks there’s hope for me.”  
  
“There’s always hope,” he whispered. “Always.”  
  
She didn’t think so, but it didn’t matter, because for now she had his heartbeat beneath her ear, his arm around her waist, and his gentle breathing guiding her own.


	2. Two.

She wasn’t ready for it to be morning. She never was. It didn’t help that her alarm charm began jangling well before dawn was even a hypothesis, let alone a substantiated theory. She sighed, rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and reached a toe across to his side of the bed. Empty, cold sheets. She half-turned, as if her sight might uncover evidence unavailable to her other senses. But he remained stubbornly absent, and by the chill sheets she’d been alone some time.  
  
Well, but it was cold in the bedroom. The winter’s chill seeped in along the windows, and so perhaps he hadn’t been out of bed very long after all. She leaned up on an elbow, and fumbled for the tumbler she’d left on the bedside table.  
  
She’d nearly resolved on braving the cold floor, when she heard his tread on the stair. He probably thought he was being stealthy, pushing the door open so slowly.  
  
“It’s okay, I’m up. Sort of.”  
  
“‘Sort of’ is a start.”  
  
“It’s a marginal commitment.”  
  
“Would the possibility of waffles elicit a more binding declaration of intent to join the land of the waking?”  
  
“Possibly?”  
  
“Excellent; get up and help me make them.” He swept the quilts off her, and then went for her pillow as she squawked and tried to claw them back in place. “Get up, or I’ll make this bed with you in it. …Er, wait, that’s not a very efficacious threat, is it? Get up, or I’ll Floo Weasley with your resignation letter.”  
  
“Some days that’s not a very good threat, either,” she informed him, as she jammed her feet into her slippers.  
  
He tossed her dressing gown at her. “It worked for today, though, and I’m a pragmatic fellow. Waffles! I insist.”  
  
By the time she had batter ready to pour across the iron, it was evident that the sun still existed. The world beyond the kitchen windows was coalescing out of the morning fog, tree boughs heavy with snow against a flat grey sky. “Isn’t it funny,” she said, “That you’re the one wanted waffles, but I’m the one cooking?”  
  
“I’m helping. I’m brewing coffee.”  
  
She rolled her eyes, and plated his breakfast. “The percolator’s making the coffee, and you’re lucky you’re lovable.”  
  
“Well, I’m lucky you’re delusional enough to think so, anyway.”  
  
“In that case, maybe it’s not such a sound plan to point out my delusions?”  
  
He kissed her forehead. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”  
  
Except he did. More and more often, of late. Unsettling little asides, a jibe that wasn’t quite funny if she thought about it too long, a somber remark like last night, when he’d tried to convince her she’d be fine without him. It wasn’t a good trend. Although, maybe she _was_ delusional, and reading too much into things. She did that. A lot.  
  
It was stress, she decided, the third time she’d broken the nib of her quill. Not stress from work, exactly — her daily routine wasn’t halfway absorbing or complicated enough to be stressful in and of itself — but perhaps stress from the tedium and ennui of spending her days cooped in this windowless little cell, totting up columns and issuing memos.  
  
She was almost thankful when Ginny ducked into her office, and set the wards to chiming. “Crikey, Hermione, can’t you stop it doing that?”  
  
“I don’t like people sneaking up on me when I’m working.”  
  
“I’m not sneaking.”  
  
“No, that furtive, twitchy look is just normal for you, right?”  
  
“Shut up. I’m trying to avoid Perce. You’re not expecting him anytime soon, are you? No? Good. So,” she crossed her legs and leaned back in the chair as if she expected to stay awhile, “How was your date?”  
  
“What date? Oh, you mean dinner. It was nice.”  
  
“Yeah, ‘what date?’ indeed. First it’s imaginary dates, next it’ll be an imaginary boyfriend, and I suppose you won’t invite us to your imaginary wedding. Give over. Harry may be an idiot when it comes to relationships and lack thereof, but you can’t pull that on me.”  
  
Hermione pointedly recharged her quill and reached for another authorization form, but Ginny refused to take the hint.  
  
“Look, you didn’t want to spend the evening with Ron, fine. _I_ don’t want to spend evenings with Ron, and the two of them doing the mopey bachelor routine is just killing my sex drive. But you’re developing some genuinely antisocial habits, Hermione. It’s worrying.”  
  
“What’s antisocial? I’m the same as I’ve always been. So I enjoy a quiet evening with a good book, what’s the matter with that? And I _did_ have dinner with a very nice fellow last night.” So there.  
  
Ginny snorted, and the snort became a giggle, and the giggle became a despairing shake of her head. “You’re channelling my Great Aunt Muriel just now, and let me tell you: it’s horrific. You’re a terrible liar.”  
  
“Alright, how about this instead. I had a crying jag over work and your stupid brother, and we had a cushion fight and he rubbed my back and we drank an entire bottle of cabernet sauvignon and I made us waffles for breakfast this morning.”  
  
Ginny uncrossed her legs, positioned her feet very firmly upon Terra Firma, and sat up straight. “So when do we get to meet this unicorn of yours?”  
  
“Keep saying things like that and the answer will be “Never.””  
  
“Ministry holiday party. Thursday. Bring him or else!”  
  
“Or else what? And no, I don’t think so. You know Rita and the rest of the press will be swarming the place, I’m not about to scupper a friendship like that.”  
  
“You stay over, and you’re only at friends?”  
  
“Relationship. Whatever. It’s not… it’s a little complicated. Or rather, we’ve both carefully decided not to examine it, in order to keep it as un-complicated as possible. And I do have work to do today; was there something in particular that brought you all the way in to the Ministry?”  
  
“Two things. One, you’re a lunatic and that line of reasoning is so convoluted I almost believe you _are_ seeing someone, and two, I came to strong-arm Harry into coming to Gladrags with me when he gets off shift.”  
  
“And you’re in my office because…?”  
  
“Because Harry’s in a meeting right now, and he can’t very well shag me across his desk if Thurston’s debriefing a case, now can he? Or at least,” she added consideringly, “it probably wouldn’t be in good taste.”  
  
“Thank you for that completely unnecessary image. Get out of my office.”  
  
“Bring a date on Thursday, and it’s a deal.”  
  
“I need to Floo Percy.” She didn’t, of course (nothing short of catastrophe would ever cause her to summon that particular evil into her life), but the threat worked. She charmed her cold tea back to something approaching a drinkable temperature, kicked her feet up on the corner of the desk, and fell to musing about the contagious nature of pragmatism.  
  
Thursday, though.   
  
Perhaps she could be conveniently ill. Would George rat her out, if she added a skiving snack-box or two to her weekly ration? Probably. And besides, she’d already replenished her supply of potion — she couldn’t turn up twice in one week. Or she shouldn’t, at least.  
  
“I have been struck down by a brutal plague,” she later announced to Severus, as she set her glass aside for the morning.   
  
“Is this the vomiting sort, the wheezing kind, or a combination thereof? Hopefully not festering buboes — I’m not sure you’re handy enough with cosmetics to make buboes presentable for the Ministry party.”  
  
“Thank-you-I-think. I don’t want to go.”  
  
“Careful, that’s very nearly a whinge.”  
  
“I’m allowed. I’m sick. I’m on death’s doorstep, a whinge is perfectly reasonable given my prognosis.”  
  
“Your prognosis being miraculous recovery once you finish your soup.”  
  
“I think it’ll take ‘til dessert, at least.”  
  
“Not at all. I’ll have you know my chicken tomato soup is a veritable tonic — you’ll be feeling so well after dinner that you’ll consent to come upstairs and try on dress robes, and I won’t have to wrestle you into a single one of them.”  
  
She shook her head sadly. “Severus, you poor misguided soul. We clearly need to embark upon an educational curriculum of bodice rippers and rom-coms, because you’re supposed to want to help me _out_ of my clothing.”  
  
“There, your libido’s back already. I predict you’ll be in excellent health by Thursday. Finish up, and you can model your shoe collection for me.”  
  
“All five pairs.”  
  
“Four, surely. I positively forbid your wearing the sassy black ones anywhere beyond the bedroom.”  
  
Chicken tomato soup might very well be a tonic, but not when you laughed mid-swallow, and snorted it into your sinuses.  
  
It rather killed the mood, but she liked watching him laugh. His eyes crinkled up, and his shoulders fell back, and the velvet timbre of his chuckles washing over her more than made up for the embarrassment of having to blow tomato snot out of her nose.  
  
She wondered if he’d ever laughed like that, in the days when she knew him Before.


	3. Three.

“No thanks.” She raised her hands to fend off the proffered cocktail. He pushed it against her palm anyway, sloshing the cold liquid over her fingers.  
  
“Whoops, better take it!”  
  
She flicked her fingers and hoped she got some splashes on his robes. Hollow victory if she did, because she was still stuck, holding a sugary drink she didn’t want. She smiled tightly at the Ministry twat (Marcus? Michael?) who’d evidently decided that she needed company. “I’m seeing someone.”  
  
“Sure you are, you’re staring right at me, can’t help but see me!”  
  
She firmly reminded herself that she was Hermione Granger, Token Display Piece, and therefore should set the glass on a passing servitor’s tray instead of throwing it in Marcus/Michael’s face. “My hands are all sticky. Bye.”  
  
Maybe she’d managed to lose him, ducking through the crowds. The trouble was, though, that there was signage pointing out where the Ladies’ was, so the odds were good that he’d be outside when she finally decided to emerge. She scrubbed her hands again for good measure, and wished she’d thought to put a book in her handbag. Or better, a Portkey home, since Apparating would require her to leave the loo and actually run the gauntlet out to the designated Apparition point. She sighed.  
  
“Just staring won’t help.”  
  
“Sorry?”  
  
“At yourself, in the mirror. Want me to lend a hand with a charm or two? Or some rouge, look, I’ve got a pink here that will brighten you right up!” Ginny was either stalking her, or stalking her. She began digging cosmetics out of her glittery clutch at an almost frenetic pace.  
  
“Gin, you barely even wear makeup, why do you have all…,” she waved helplessly at the explosion littering the countertop, “all this _stuff_?”  
  
“Fleur. The answer to any stupid question like that is always ‘Fleur’. You know that.”   
  
Fair enough.   
  
“Stay still and this will all be over soon.” Ginny advanced on her with a compact, a brush, and a menacing expression.  
  
“Ginnyyyyyyy. No. Why can’t people just take ‘no’ for an answer anymore?”  
  
“Is this about Michael? He’s nice enough, I don’t know why you’re being so picky. You turn down every bloke I shove in your direction; it’s getting hard to find anyone whose ego you haven’t managed to crush, yet.”  
  
She closed her eyes reflexively as Ginny stabbed a brush toward them and sighed, “I’m not looking. I don’t understand why you can’t just accept that I’m perfectly happy.”  
  
“Alone. You don’t even have a cat anymore, Hermione!”  
  
“I’m not alone.”  
  
“Your imaginary boyfriend doesn’t count. Listen, just give Michael a chance, he’s nice, he’s smart, he’s actually a good match for you if you’d just pull your head out of your arse for once and—”  
  
“Thanks for being such a great friend.”  
  
Ginny set her fists against her hips and glared. Hard. “I am, you know. You think you’re all that different from Ron, these days? You’re both of you doing the best you can to alienate anyone who cares about you. Did I give you hell over missing Harry’s birthday? Or that dinner at the Burrow a few weeks ago? Or the girls’ night Parvati invited us to? No. I keep trying. I keep trying because I care about you.” Ginny drew in a shaky breath. Her eyes were a bit glassy, maybe.  
  
Hermione looked down at her shoes (black, sensible heels, not the least bit sassy), and muttered, “Sorry. I know. I’m sorry.”  
  
And so she walked back out to the guillotine of social interaction, and of course he was there, and of course this would be awkward, and when could she reasonably flee, and oh hell he was talking to her.  
  
“Look, I came off badly. It’s just, you’re Hermione Granger, and I’m terrible at this, and you probably have all sorts of people who are a good deal more suave and urbane, and I was just trying to flirt a bit with you, and I’m terrible at it, and I’m sorry.”  
  
She shrugged helplessly.  
  
“I am. Sorry, I mean.”  
  
“Alright.”  
  
He seemed to expect her to say something more. When she didn’t, he essayed a cautious smile and extended a hand. “Let’s start again, could we? I’m Michael Fernsby, and I think you’re very pretty. I also think you’re awfully smart, but everyone does, so I reckoned I’d lead with ‘pretty’. How am I doing?”  
  
“Two points for projected honesty, minus three for style and delivery.” When in doubt, say something that Severus would — sarcasm had borne her through more than one mortifyingly awkward social situation. It could surely be made to serve through another.  
  
He smiled.   
  
That was new.  
  
“Well then! I’m only one point down, that’s progress.”  
  
“You don’t get points for basic arithmetic.”  
  
“No? That’s a shame, because I happen to think you’re a square number, on account of the exponential growth of my attraction to you.”  
  
That was also new.  
  
“C’mon, just talk with me for a little bit, let me get you a drink. A drink you actually want, this time? Please?” He gave her a hopeful, puppy-ish smile.  
  
“Alright, but I’m not planning to stay much longer.” She’d give him five minutes, maybe ten. Just long enough for Ginny to stop lurking behind the fairy-lit Christmas tree.  
  
“Yeah, I can’t imagine these sorts of events are all that comfortable. For you, I mean. With the press, and people like Weasley swanning around. Oh yes, he’s got a reputation down our end, too.”  
  
“Which office did you say you were in?”  
  
“Experimental Charms division, Library Records. It’s boring, I know.” He spread his palms apologetically.  
  
Perhaps he’d only been used to having to apologise to lesser mortals, because fifteen minutes later, he still showed no signs of actually being bored. And, curiously enough, she wasn’t either. Nor at twenty minutes. By thirty, they’d hit a lull, and she recalled that she was supposed to have pulled a vanishing act.   
  
He insisted upon walking out with her, but possibly that was alright, because she was able to simply wave at several annoying colleagues, instead of stopping to converse. “I think this is the fastest I’ve ever managed to get clear of one of these events; thank you, you’re a good shield.”  
  
“I’m good at all kinds of things; my skillset is wonderfully diverse.” Apparently he felt the need to demonstrate, because he was suddenly breathing into her face, and his torso was pressing her into the wall, and his hand was scrabbling at the fabric of her robes where they clung to her hips, and his lips were on hers and his tongue was shoving into her mouth and she scraped her shoulder falling and she’d bruised her knuckles and her robes had been pulled open and her left shoe was missing but she was home and she was safe so why were her hands shaking so badly and had she put three drops in or four?  
  
She sank down along the cupboards, gagging into the sleeve of her robe, trying to scrub out her mouth with the fabric. It didn’t help. She could still feel the muscular thrusting of his tongue, an alien parasite seeking entry to her body.  
  
She spat again.  
  
Wiped at the spittle and tears running down her chin.  
  
Reached for the tea towel from where it hung on the oven door, and worked it across every surface of her oral cavity, as deliberately and thoroughly as she would dry the dishes. There were smears of something on it, when she’d finished. Blood, probably. Her tongue was stinging, when she finally swished and swallowed her potion. Must’ve bit it, Apparating.  
  
“I take it tonight Did Not Go Well.” He sat down cross-legged in front of her, leaning against the cupboards opposite.   
  
“Accurate,” she said to his stockinged toes.  
  
There was nothing uncomfortable in the long silence that followed. There never was.   
  
Eventually, he took the towel from her hands. It was dark, but maybe he could see that she’d ceased wringing it, finally. He stroked one of his fingers across a knuckle as he did so. “I was in bed already. Reading, is all. Feel like joining? Or what if I ran you a bath?”  
  
She gave him a watery smile, but he probably couldn’t see it in the gloom. “Bath first, I think. What are you reading?”  
  
“It’s called _In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts_. Want a hand up? There we go, steady now. Have you hurt your ankle?”  
  
“Not badly, I don’t think. You go ahead, I’ll be up shortly. I didn’t save any of my potion for the morning, I’ll just fix myself another glass.”  
  
He pressed a warm hand to her shoulder, squeezed gently, and then left without comment.  
  
He was seated on the edge of the bathtub, testing the water temperature, when she finally worked up the courage to join him in the light. Well, candle-light. He’d eschewed the muggle electricity, and lit some of the little jar candles that she’d received as gifts and subsequently stashed in the bottom of the linen pantry.   
  
It was a bit sweet of him. She returned the shoulder-squeeze, and rather thought he understood.  
  
“I’ll give you some privacy, just as soon as you tell me whether you’d prefer _Raspberry Sorbet_ , _Vanilla Biscuit_ , or _Blueberry Shortbread_ — why do all of your bubble baths sound like desserts, out of curiosity?”  
  
“Dunno. Vanilla, I guess. Maybe it’s because women are supposed to think of themselves as something edible. Consumable.”  
  
She would not mind too much, she thought, as she sank into the foam, if _he_ wanted to eat her up. Until she was all gone, even. That would likely be much nicer than a great many alternatives.


	4. Four.

It was sunny when she opened her eyes. Had she forgotten to set her charm? She tossed back her potion, and wondered where Severus had disappeared to.   
  
Between dragging a brush over her hair, and sussing him out where he was lurking behind a newspaper in the kitchen, she resolved upon a course of inaction for the day. “Obviously I slept through my alarm. And obviously, you let me,” she told him.  
  
He set his paper aside. His eyebrow was quirked at an angle that usually signalled worry. “Yes, sorry. It was so late by the time you fell asleep. I thought you could do with a lie-in. Toast? Or I’ll fix you something to take along, if you’re going to caffeinate and dash.”  
  
“Actually, I think I’ll just be underfoot today. If you had any plans, consider them cancelled.”  
  
He smirked, and poured her a mug of coffee. “It’s nice how I’m permitted to have an opinion around here. Are you skiving off work, then?”  
  
“Yeah. I suppose I’ll have to Floo Percy.” She grimaced into her mug. “Do I look sick? Or hung over, even?”  
  
“I’m smart enough not to answer that.”  
  
“Good, here’s hoping he’s willing to be convinced I’m infectious and can’t possibly come in to work.”  
  
It was, hands down, the shortest Floo call she’d ever managed. Severus was only just buttering toast when she returned, triumphant. “I think Percy must’ve been completely blotto last night, he sounded awful. If I were the sadistic sort, I’d have kept him on the call and explained about the triplicate forms.”  
  
“Sometimes you’re not a terribly nice person.”  
  
“That’s why you like me.”  
  
“Oh, absolutely.” He air-kissed in the vicinity of her cheek, and slid the toast in front of her. “You’re on hols all through next week, aren’t you?”  
  
“And the week after. You’ll be sick of me by then.”  
  
“In a rare and arduous effort to be diplomatic, I’d like to suggest it will probably be mutual.”  
  
He was wrong, of course, but in an equal showing of diplomacy, she didn’t bother to correct him. Instead, she just stole his newspaper, stirred her coffee, and applied a scrape of jam across her toast. When she reckoned enough time had passed (they were on their third cups of coffee, and had repaired to the sitting room to curl up beneath throws and quilts) that his guard was apt to be down, she embarked on the first stage of the campaign she’d decided to wage: “I think you should come on an adventure with me.”  
  
He looked up from his book. Warily, because he evidently knew her quite well. “I notice that when Gryffindors use the word ‘adventure’, they do typically mean it quite precisely,” he said, mildly.  
  
“Then you’ll be relieved to know I’m only thinking of a shopping trip on the Muggle side; let’s go get dressed.”  
  
“Hold on, I haven’t agreed to anything! And shopping for what, pray tell? What do you need in a Muggle shop that you can’t get in Diagon Alley?”  
  
Victory, so far. If he’d had no intention of being persuaded, he’d have dug in his heels and turned taciturn; questions were a good sign. “I can’t very well go to Diagon Alley if I’m supposed to be sick; weren’t you a spy, once upon a time?”  
  
“Yes, and my keen powers of observation permit me to detect that you haven’t answered either of my questions.” Yet he followed her up the staircase anyway.  
  
“I thought we’d go to _The Christmas Forest_ ,” she said, as she pulled a jumper over her head, then wrestled her hair free from it. “I’ve always done Christmas at Grimmauld Place, before. I haven’t decorated a tree since I was little. I thought it might be nice. To do together, I mean,” she said to her sock drawer. A pair of his had ended up in there; she turned to lob them in his direction, and surprised a quirky, warm little smile on his lips.  
  
“Thanks. I suppose. If you’re set on this mad scheme. I could come with. I guess. Chiefly because I imagine you’ll need my help carrying the blasted thing, given you’ll manage to forget you’re a witch and can charm it weightless.”  
  
She grinned outright. “But think of the optics! Lady alone, merrily tramping through London with a six-foot Douglas fir?”  
  
“…You really can’t just accept my capitulation and leave me with the last word so as to maintain some semblance of dignity?”  
  
She shook her head solemnly, seated herself on the bed beside him, and interrupted his putting on his left sock by the expedient method of shoving him over into the pillows and kissing him until they were both gasping for air.  
  
“Not that I’m complaining, mind,” he said as his breathing evened out, “But this isn’t getting your tree.”  
  
She blew a strand of his hair out of her face. “Oh my! You _do_ have keen powers of observation.”  
  
With one thing (and another, and another after that), it was fully evening by the time they released the tree boughs. “Who ever knew conifers could make you so happy,” he drawled, sweeping at the fallen needles peppering the carpet.   
  
She didn’t mind. He was Severus after all, and Severus was unnerved by people beaming at him and randomly kissing him when he least expected it, so he was only doing that protective colouration thing, i.e., being a bit of a git. “Blissfully happy,” she informed him, as she moved to stand at his back and encircle his waist with her arms, “Although I think it’s mostly the company.”  
  
“You have low standards.”  
  
“I do, don’t I?” A little sarcasm would put him on an even keel. “See, I’m fond of you even though you _have_ forgotten how to use basic cleaning charms. _Evanesco_. Want to help me fix drinks, or would you rather charm fairy lights? It looks easy enough, by the book.”  
  
Which remark he quite naturally took as a challenge.  
  
By the muttering she could hear even from her retreat to the kitchen, she had plenty of time to fix buttered rum. She grinned. He really _was_ pants at charms. All that foolish wand-waving, indeed.   
  
Practise was good for him, she decided, as she scooped butter and brown sugar into a pair of mugs. She took down the rum (and her blue flask), set the kettle warming on the stove (dripped four precise drops into each quadrant of her water glass), then muddled in cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice (checked the clock and drank two thirds precisely).   
  
The muttering had progressed to absentmindedly humming along with the Christmas instrumentals, so she judged it safe enough to return and be delighted. He’d managed better than she thought he might, and drat it all, she was back to beaming at him. “It’s gorgeous, Severus.”  
  
He took the mug she proffered, and squinted critically at the tree. “Any gaps? I can’t tell anymore, with how they keep flickering.”  
  
“It’s lovely,” she assured him. “I remember Mum would spend hours. With the electric lights, getting them all to sit just right in the branches. She’d tie them in place with black thread.”  
  
Her voice must have gone a little sad, because Severus gave up his scrutiny of his handiwork, and tucked an arm around her. “You should go and visit them sometime.”  
  
“…Maybe.”  
  
“Or we could go. Sometime.”  
  
“Maybe.” That sounded a little better. They could always spend the week at a beach. It would be more fun than when she’d tried doing that alone, after that one time she’d attempted to reconnect with them. “Maybe sometime.”  
  
He didn’t press (she was grateful), only nodded, and turned back to survey their tree. “What next? Filius and Minerva always put up baubles and things. I suppose they must’ve charmed and transfigured them.” He didn’t quite hide a grimace.  
  
“Sure, I could fix some up. Growing up we had glass ornaments, of course. They were in a big box in the attic. I couldn’t find them, when I moved back in. What did your family do?”  
  
He looked down at her. Looked away. Sipped his drink. “Nothing.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
He jabbed his wand in the tree’s direction, and two more flickering motes of light floated from its tip, to tangle up and become lost amongst the others.   
  
She retrieved _Holiday Household Enchantments_ from where he’d abandoned it on the sofa, and opened it at random. It didn’t suggest anything helpful to say, in a situation like this. Why couldn’t Molly give her useful books, like _How to Extract Feet from Mouths_?   
  
“Mam would help me a hang a stocking, though. And she always put an orange in it. I loved oranges. My first Christmas at Hogwarts, when I saw they were using them as décor? It nearly wrecked me, it did.”  
  
“You didn’t go home at hols, then, first year?”  
  
“No.” His tone went wistful. “I couldn’t have got home by myself from London; no one had the fare for the train, and Lily’s family was driving on, I don’t recall where.”  
  
“I’m sorry.” It was so inadequate.  
  
“Oh, don’t be.” He said it with the air of someone brushing their hands off. “I nicked a fruitcake from the kitchens and owled it home that year. Here, fix us another round, and pass me that ruddy book. Let’s see if we can order decorating charms by complexity in accordance with increasing inebriation.”  
  
They managed ice flowers and ribbons, and Severus even conjured softly swirling snowflakes while she hung the peppermint canes they’d picked up at Tesco. Neither of them could suss out how to transfigure Knuts to hanging ornaments; at his sixth failed attempt, Severus declared that a) the spellbook was rubbish, b) their tree was very fine just as it was, and c) snogging in front of a roaring fire was an activity much to be preferred.   
  
She tended to agree on all counts.


	5. Five.

“Hermione! You’ve emerged from hibernation!”  
  
Damn it. It was Tuesday, wasn’t it? George wasn’t supposed to be in the shop, Tuesday afternoons. “I thought you’d be down country at the Burrow already?”  
  
“Lee’s taken hols early, he’s planning to propose. Don’t tell anyone I told you.”  
  
“Just how many people aren’t supposed to tell anyone that you told them, by now?”  
  
“Oh, a few dozen, I suppose. Anyway, it’s nice getting away from them all, sometimes. The house is just _crammed_ , right up to the rafters. Mum finally relented this year, though, and so we’re doing Christmas dinner at Grimmauld Place with Gin and Harry. You’re still coming, right?”  
  
“I-I suppose.”  
  
“Hmph. Well you know, the two of us could always elope, and then we’d both have a valid excuse.”  
  
“Ha ha. It’s just hard, is all.”  
  
“Yeah. I think it’ll be better, though, at Grimmauld. Not so many memories hanging about, y’know.”  
  
She nodded.  
  
“And Ron’s been better.”  
  
She raised her eyebrows.  
  
“Well, no, he hasn’t, but I thought maybe I’d just dose up his pumpkin juice with Daydream Draught and straight-jacket him and that way we could avoid any drama. Speaking of, I assume you’re here for a refill?” He unlocked the cabinet behind the counter before he’d even finished his question. She didn’t bother answering, just counted out coins.  
  
“Can’t interest you in another flask? Doesn’t it get boring, just daydreaming the same old thing, over and over again? I guess you won’t want any of the sporting ones, but how about a nice Polynesian beach, or here: Angelina had a brilliant idea to do a theatre series, and now you can see anything that’s played in the West End in the past year! Look, I’ve got Shakespeare’s Globe, even, that’s just the thing.”  
  
“No, thank you, George. I’m quite happy with the one I’ve got.”  
  
He seemed to want to say something. His lips twitched a couple times, before he finally settled on repeating his earlier question: “But aren’t you a bit bored by now? You never did tell me what you used to season the glass with, on that prototype I gave you.”  
  
She looked away. “Bit of dirt. From the back garden. In Melbourne.”  
  
He swallowed. Sighed. Looked uncomfortable. “I guess… I guess I suspected it was something like that. I… I’m glad I took your advice, though, and didn’t ever sell any that weren’t already seasoned. I think…” He reached across the counter, and settled his hand over hers. It was warm, dry. Solid.  
  
“What do you think, George?” she asked, softly.  
  
“Nothing. Never mind. We’re all just getting along, aren’t we? I haven’t told anyone. I won’t, you can trust I won’t. I did something like that, too. Once.”  
  
She reached for his other hand. “Do you want to tell me? What you used?”  
  
He gazed down at their linked hands for a long time before answering. “Hair. Fred’s hair.” His fingers squeezed hers, a little too hard. “It wasn’t any good, though, it was just this hollow echo. Like talking to myself. On repeat. I broke the bottle, after. I’m glad I did! …Mostly.”  
  
She squeezed his hands back, gently. “We’re all just getting along. Mostly.”  
  
He had almost recovered his equanimity by the time he’d sorted her change. “Happy Christmas, Hermione,” he said, as she tucked the potion into her handbag. “I hope you’ll come over. For dinner, at least.”  
  
“Sure,” she lied to him. Again.  
  
Well, and maybe she would, she thought, as she retrieved her blue flask from its place in the cupboard. The Pensieve silver danced beneath her fingertips, pulsing and glowing from where it was trapped within the very glass itself. ...And then again, maybe she wouldn’t.  
  
_fin._


End file.
